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IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

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Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#91

Post by alistproducer2 »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #49
devopsproject wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the results there speak for themselves 151% stock increase? Nearly double market cap?

I find the enthusiasm for tearing down Mayer gross, but to be clear: subtract the value of the alibaba stock and all that disappears.

The only reason Mayer was brought into the discussion is because she employed a similar tactic: not because I was "enthused" with tearing her down. I haven't read any criticism in this thread that was base or that smacked of sexism. The criticism has stuck to the facts of her tenure.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#92

Post by stkrzysiak »

homakov wrote: post #85

Unrelated: Are there people in the world who prefer spending 8 hours in the office vs 8 hours wherever they want (office OR home OR cafe)?

I know someone who took an office gig after 5+ yrs of remote due to lack of the 'office experience'. He's a sane, smart guy, I think he just got tired of being home all the time. That or his kids reached the obnoxious age.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#93

Post by S_A_P »

homakov wrote: post #83
S_A_P wrote: post #63

IBM is a failed services company. Ive been a subcontractor for 2 projects run by IBM. Both fiascos of mismanagement. The project management at IBM had an incredible churn rate. On the first project, they were kicked off for completely failing to deliver. The second project had them completely marginalized. The sad thing is that it was another "big 4" consulting company that took over, who was only slightly less incom…

What kind of consulting was that? Anything about development?

Yes. I write custom code for several commodity trading risk management software platforms along with integration, implementation, interfaces, etc.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#94

Post by cracell »

padobson wrote: post #14

A theory among some employees is that IBM is using co-location as a downsizing effort. I hope it's not an accurate theory. Downsizing this way means your most self-motivated, productive employees are likely to leave long before those who drive to the office because they feel they have no other choice. Like Best Buy and Yahoo at the points at which they decided to co-locate, IBM is a business that needs to do somethin…

Yeah pretty telling that they are following in the footsteps of Best Buy and Yahoo. Two companies that no one considers leaders in the innovation space right now.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#95

Post by Consultant32452 »

jrs235 wrote: post #88
organsnyder wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A month's severance is a lot cheaper than paying for unemployment benefits.

From my understanding, and this will vary from state to state since unemployment insurance is managed and dealt with by states, not the federal government, employees would still possibly be able to collect unemployment after that month of severance runs out if they are unable to get a new job (and are actively looking) and the unemployment claims will still ding IBM. That month of severance offsets their unemployment…

The relevant statute is called the WARN Act, Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification. This requires 60 days notice (or 60 days pay) among other things.

https://www.doleta.gov/layoff/pdf/WorkerWARN2003.pdf

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#96

Post by zeveb »

padobson wrote: post #14

A theory among some employees is that IBM is using co-location as a downsizing effort. I hope it's not an accurate theory. Downsizing this way means your most self-motivated, productive employees are likely to leave long before those who drive to the office because they feel they have no other choice. Like Best Buy and Yahoo at the points at which they decided to co-locate, IBM is a business that needs to do somethin…

Driving off the most productive, most motivated employees is what IBM has spent the last decade and more doing. It doesn't want people who can get jobs elsewhere: it wants people who are too scared to leave.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#97

Post by [deleted] »

mvdwoord wrote: post #50
jmcdiesel wrote: post #41

IBM is so weird. I haven't worked for them, but I work with 2 former IBM Engineers in Austin... both of them say the same weird things.. like, you can't get two monitors (when one asked, he was declined, then his boss pulled an old CRT out of a closet and gave it too him... a 640x480 CRT from what must have been 184 years ago) ... And other weird tales that just seem antithetical to a tech company..

IBM is beyond weird. Source: I spent about 14 of the past 20 years there (as a contractor) in the Global Services division. But for all the weirdness, and downright idiocy at times, they were always truly supportive of working from home. None of those funny remarks or anything either with coworkers. At least in the teams I have worked in, everybody was always valued on output, not "visibility" or any of that typical…

[deleted]

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#98

Post by bigmattystyles »

/IBM employee rant begin

To me, the fact that IBM has for years encouraged remote work, been affirmatively OK with people moving hundreds, even thousands of miles from their nearest co-location center to then yanking this policy and forcing employees to decide whether to move in a short amount of time makes this, in my mind, a thinly-veiled downsizing effort.

Imagine; for years, your department in is NY state, but you've been told it's totally cool to move to Colorado and work from home. In fact, IBM exclaims how it's good for the company because it saves space and money! You build your family's life there, then all the sudden - you have a month to decide to relocate to NY state (sell your house, change your kids' school, etc) or quit with a measly package. They won't even allow you to go to the nearby IBM office in Colorado because your group is based in NY state.

I know employment is at-will, and what IBM is doing is perfectly legal. It doesn't mean it doesn't stink.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#99

Post by mikeyouse »

leogiertz wrote: post #43
devopsproject wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the results there speak for themselves 151% stock increase? Nearly double market cap?

Yahoo had a negative valuation if you removed their stake in Alibaba.

Not really true..

The math that made the rounds was based on a faulty premise. You basically had what I'll call Yahoo Group (YG) comprised of Core Yahoo (CY), a stake in Alibaba (YAB) and Yahoo Japan (YJ).

People were saying that if you took YG and subtracted YAB and YJ, that the value of the remaining business, CY, was negative.

What they missed was that you can't just plop in the current market price of YAB and YJ. Yahoo's ownership in those companies was old enough that they would have to pay significant taxes to unload them.

So the real math would be YG = [YAB x (1-T)] + [YJ x (1-T)] + CY

Where T is the tax rate. Realistically, it'd be some Monte Carlo of the likelihood of tax rates as they were aggressively trying to minimize the tax paid, but still, CY wouldn't be negative.

As a final bit of evidence for this -- Yahoo's core business was just bought for over $4.5 billion. So.. you know.. not a negative number.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#100

Post by mds »

pm90 wrote: post #4

Disclosure: I'm a developer at IBM, but not speaking in official capacity. The comment here is completely personal. I went through this article and it seems like a lot of FUD. The line to note is: > Though not every department at IBM will be asked to colocate, many will. So yes, some departments have been "asked" to colocate. However, AFAIK nobody is being "forced". My team lead was asked to colocate but decided to s…

I also work for IBM, remotely. So far I've heard no hint of anything like this internally. My boss claims he's heard nothing about it.

Are there any technical IBM employees here who have been "forced" to relocate?

This post and all others I've seen are just rewrites of the original (unsourced) article last month in The Register (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/09/ibm_workfromhome_cu...) with no additional facts or updates.

I may be proven wrong, in which case I'll be looking for another job. But agreed, as far as I can see, at least regarding technical employees this is FUD.

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